Minority-Paranoia; 14-Year-Old Ahmed Mohamed Sent to Jail for Bringing Homemade Clock to School

As a Nation, we have a history of engendering needless fear of dark skin people. “Minority-Paranoia”; a blinding effect that produces ignorant and hateful acts also known as discrimination. This young creative genius is a victim of your fears.

I find it encouraging that these instances of discrimination continue to burst through national headlines. It is a sounding board that says ‘We all need to talk.’ Newest news: Boy genius brings latest creation in for show and tell, but he is Muslim so it must be a bomb. He was arrested and questioned without parents and legal representation present.

The hateful South of Jim Crow Era used Minority-Paranoia to criminalize being black. Which then made blacks an easy target, as scape-goats even white women who were victims of domestic violence could blame a black man for their battered bodies (1923: Rosewood Massacre). There are many other examples, this was merely first in my recollection.

Source: Dallas News http://goo.gl/8B6j6c

Unfortunately, the Muslim community will continue to face these kinds of discrimination because the Bush Administration used what sociologist Bonaro Overstreet described as (to paraphrase) a maniacal power move, asking America to condone war/retaliation in the height of National trauma, conditioning us to fear a named enemy. In the Middle East, over 1 mill innocent civilians who had nothing to do with a select group of Terrorists, have lost their lives to US military aggression. Yet we blink an eye like nothing ever happened while we are told “Never Forget.” We are told never forget who the enemy is here, we have swallowed the propaganda pill.

Fear, above all else, is the strongest active ingredient in the making of our perception as it pertains to defining an enemy.

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